Relationship shown between light at night and cancer

GHN News Editor - A relationship between light at night and the development of cancer has
been found in new research from the Center for Interdisciplinary
Chronobiological Research at the University of Haifa.



This follows another correlation, "High power light bulbs contribute to
'environmental light pollution" or a carcinogenic pollution.

Prof. Abraham Haim, who headed the present study, says that people
living in areas with more night-time illumination are more susceptible
to prostate cancer, and women are more susceptible to breast cancer.

What they have discovered is that LAN negatively impacts melatonin
production.  This is the hormone released from the pineal gland during
the dark part of the 24 hour period.

When the hormone is suppressed, cancer rises.

Researchers tell us
that this suppression of melatonin due to exposure to LAN is
responsible for the significant rise of cancer patients over the past
several years.  They are not sure, however, what the mechanism is behind
all this.

“Exposure to
LAN- disrupts our biological clock and affects the cyclical rhythm that
has developed over hundreds of millions of evolutionary years that were
devoid of LAN. Light pollution as an environmental problem is gaining
awareness around the world, and the World Health Organization’s
International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) has already
classified working the night shift as a higher grade of cancer risk,”
the researchers noted.